Lean Agile Developers Group, a group of more than a 1200 practitioners of Lean Agile product development processes, today released a much awaited white paper on STRIDE, a Lean Agile product development methodology optimized for a geographical dispersed team. The white paper entitled "STRIDE Methodology - Lean Agile Development in a Structured, Dual-shore Environment" is available for free download at Lean Agile Developers Group's website. http://www.Lean-Agile-Group.org
Companies adopt both dual-shore approaches and agile methodologies with the intent to reduce development cost and project durations. Combining the two can indeed have a synergistic effect. However, this is still very much an emerging field. Companies have been attempting dual-shore agile projects for only a few years.
When dual-shore development first became popular, many companies experienced problems due to process breakdowns. The usual response was to hew more closely to the recommendations of IEEE 12207 or similar traditional methodologies. The result was a severe trade-off: successful cost reduction for a painful loss of flexibility. Many companies found that when the inevitable changes in requirements occurred, any cost savings quickly disappeared.
The Stride methodology allows companies to maintain the responsiveness characteristic to agile processes without sacrificing the accountability necessary to manage an offshore location. It has worked successfully on multi-year projects with several dozen team members. By adopting a proven methodology, companies can greatly increase their odds of success.
The white paper is authored by industry experts Y. P. Talreja and Philip Spiegl. Talreja has held executive or senior management positions in large companies such as Oracle, PeopleSoft, Amazon.com and various startups, where he practiced Lean Agile Development, often in conjunction with offshore and distributed software development. Phil Spiegl is a Manager of Software Engineering at Mitchell International, Inc. Prior to Mitchell, Mr. Spiegl has held director, architect, or manager level leadership positions in software companies such as National Medical Computer Services and Digital Lighthouse.
You can download this paper at Lean Agile Developers Group's website.
